Note 136 — Chapter III · THE WEAPONS OF THE AGE OF WOOD: THE BOOMERANG AND THE SWORD OF WOOD; OF STONE, AND OF WOOD AND STONE COMBINED.

The village of Abu Rawásh, north of the Pyramids of Jízah, still works this material in large quantities; and its caillouteurs, or flint-knappers, have produced excellent imitations of the so-called prehistoric weapons. I have described the flint finds of Egypt in the Journ. Anthrop. Instit. (Feb. 1879), and shall have something more to say about them. A Mr. R. P. Greg, who writes in the same Journal (May 1881) on the ‘Flint Implements of the Nile Valley,’ is not aware of the fact that I found worked flints near the larger petrified forest (Cairo). Since that time General Pitt-Rivers made his grand discovery of ‘Chert Implements in stratified Gravel in the Nile Valley’ (Journ. Anthrop. Inst. May 1882). In March 1881, when visiting the Wady, near Elwat El-Díbán (Hill of Flies) amongst the cliffs of Thebes, he came upon palæolithic flints, flakes worked with bulbs and facets embedded in the hardened grit, six and a half to ten feet below the surface. In the same strata tombs had been cut, flat-topped chambers with quadrangular pillars. The fragments of pottery enabled Dr. Birch to pronounce these excavations ‘not later than the eighteenth dynasty, and perhaps earlier.’ The New Empire in question was founded by Amosis (Mah-mes, or Moon-child) circ. b.c. 1700; it included the three great Tothmes, and lasted about three hundred years, ending with the heretic Amun-hotep IV., slave of Amun, circ. b.c. 1400, and Horemhib, the Horus of Manetho. The worked flints may evidently date thousands of years before that period. This is a discovery of the highest importance, and we may expect, with Mr. Campbell, that the ‘works of men’s hands will be found abundantly underlying the oldest history in the world, in the hard gravel which underlies the mud of the Nile-hollow from Cairo to Assouan.’ At any rate, this find disposes of the scientific paradox that Art has no infancy in Nile-land. The strange fancy has been made popular by the Egyptologist, who threatens to become as troublesome as the Sanskritist.